These dismay quotes will inspire you. Dismay consternation and distress, typically that caused by something unexpected.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging dismay quotes, dismay sayings, and dismay proverbs.
Best Dismay Quotes
- “Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. No human being can avoid failures.” ~ Lawrence G. Lovasik
- “Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.” ~ Arthur Rubinstein
- “Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray.” ~ William Wordsworth
- “Life is the game that must be played.” ~ Edwin Arlington Robinson
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“Where men of judgment creep and feel their way, The positive pronounce without dismay.” ~ William Cowper
- “As I go through all kinds of feelings and experiences in my journey through life — delight, surprise, chagrin, dismay — I hold this question as a guiding light: ‘What do I really need right now to be happy?’ What I come to over and over again is that only qualities as vast and deep as love, connection and kindness will really make me happy in any sort of enduring way.” ~ Sharon Salzberg
- “Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.” ~ Teresa of Avila
- “Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.” ~ Richard Bach
- “Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.” ~ Rick Bass
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“There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.” ~ L. Sprague de Camp
- “Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.” ~ Honore de Balzac
- “Reporters thrive on the world’s misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.” ~ Russell Baker
- “And friends of mine that had photography class in high school would develop the film and make prints and I’d take them back to the track and give ’em away or try and sell them. Much to my parents’ dismay, I majored in photography in college.” ~ John Sexton
- “Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
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“Give me the Love that leads the way The Faith that nothing can dismay The Hope no disappointments tire The Passion that’ll burn like fire Let me not sink to be a clod Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God” ~ Amy Carmichael
- “God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy!
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day.” ~ Dinah Maria Murlock Craik - “Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope. Let nothing you dismay. You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here–here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labor and your dream.” ~ Thomas Wolfe
- “I obviously have a great love and appreciation of jewelry, thanks to my mother, much to the dismay of both my father and my boyfriends.” ~ Ivanka Trump
- “So I started to learn Russian and I was one of those probably way too eager, annoying young actor kids who was trying to change all my lines to Russian, much to the dismay of the director and Nic Cage.” ~ Jared Leto
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“I don’t have any children. I just have a cat, to my parents’ dismay.” ~ Jenna Bush
- “The name of my ailment was longing, and it was not cured till I finally went to the department store and counted out the money in small coins before the dismayed clerk. When I came to the house, I held up the instrument before the eyes of the astonished household.” ~ William Christopher Handy
- “The breaking up of the terrestrial globe, this it is we witness. It doubtless began a long time ago, and the brevity of human life enables us to contemplate it without dismay. It is not only in the great mountain ranges that the traces of this process are found. Great segments of the earth’s crust have sunk hundreds, in some cases, even thousands, of feet deep, and not the slightest inequality of the surface remains to indicate the fracture; the different nature of the rocks and the discoveries made in mining alone reveal its presence. Time has levelled all.” ~ Eduard Suess
- “But to go to school in a summer morn, O! It drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.” ~ William Blake
- “Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did.” ~ Christopher Morley
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“When I got into rap I didn’t exactly win any popularity contests. I called myself Dee Dee King, after B.B. King, to the total dismay of my fellow Ramones.” ~ Dee Dee Ramone
- “Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.” ~ Baltasar Gracian
- “I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We’re talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world… I’m just a little dismayed that people aren’t beyond it yet.” ~ Anne Bancroft
- “The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films… They can’t afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you’re getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes…” ~ Woody Allen
- “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting.’ … But the real journey – the journey of adventure itself – is frequently another matter: often gray, often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia.” ~ Katherine Cecil Thurston
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“Don’t take yourself too seriously.” ~ Trina
- “I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife inside because there was no alternative except to hide as long as possible— not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: trying to connect.” ~ Charles Bukowski
- “The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay… The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale” ~ David Lloyd George
- “For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.” ~ Petrarch
- “It fills me with dismay sometimes when you look at the scripts that do come to you that are primarily focused on violence. There are so many other things to play around with.” ~ Richard Armitage
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“Let nothing disturb you, / Nothing dismay you; / All things are passing: / God never changes.” ~ Teresa of Avila
- “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” ~ Epictetus
- “Different drinks have different metaphorical weight. Wine’s heady, gin is poisonous, vodka’s cold, and beer is plain boring. In real life, I’m a big fan of boxed white wine, much to the dismay of my more refined friends.” ~ Cate Marvin
- “The early Christians did not say, in dismay, ‘Look what the world has come to,’ but, in delight, ‘Look what has come to the world!”” ~ E. Stanley Jones
- “If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you certainly want a scientific explanation as to what’s happened. But science can’t help you to find meaning, help you deal with that turbulence of your grief, rage, and dismay.” ~ Karen Armstrong
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“I’m not a fan of the Eagles, but I’ve watched their documentary numerous times and everyone who’s watched it with me has sung along to the songs, much to my dismay.” ~ Bill Hader
- “In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.” ~ Agnes Repplier
- “Once in pre-war days, when curiously-bonneted women drivers were familiar sights at the taxi-wheels, I cried out to one in my dismay: “Is there no speed limit in this mad city?”
“Oh, yes, monsieur,” she answered sweetly over her shoulder, “but no one has ever succeeded in reaching it.”” ~ Alexander Woollcott - “When the quest of a dream has a detour or dip, look beyond your dismay and go finish the trip.” ~ Wes Fesler
- “We can choose to gather to our hearts the thorns of disappointment, failure, loneliness, and dismay in our present situation. Or we can gather the flowers of God’s grace, boundless love, abiding presence, and unmatched joy. I choose to gather the flowers.” ~ Barbara Johnson
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“What is instinct? It is the natural tendency in one when filled with dismay to turn to his wife.” ~ Finley Peter Dunne
- “I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.” ~ Sheri S. Tepper
- “There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.” ~ John Banville
- “Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I’d wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.” ~ Ann Brashares
- “Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?” ~ R. Scott Bakker
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“Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free/to be more like the man you were made to be” ~ Marcus Mumford
- “HE was standing across the street, staring at her with a look of shock and dismay. One look in Oliver’s eyes and she knew he knew. But how? How could he have known? The’d been so careful to keep their love a secret. The grief etched all over his face was too much to bear. Schuyler felt the words catch in her throat as she crossed the stree to stand in front of him. “Ollie…it’s not…” Oliver shot her a look of pure hatred, turned on his heel and began to run away. “OLIVER, please,let me explain.” ~ Melissa de la Cruz
- “If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite – the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment – is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.” ~ Wade Davis
- “There was no mistaking her sincerity–it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former understood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation–was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.” ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
- “Miss Grantham’s sense of humour got the better of her at this point, and, tottering towards a chair, she sank into it, exclaiming in tragic accents:’Oh Heavens! I am betrayed!’ His lordship blenched; both he and miss Laxton regarded her with guilty dismay. Miss Grantham buried her face in her handkerchief, and uttered one shattering word: ‘Wretch!” ~ Georgette Heyer
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“If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48)” ~ Stephen Levine
- “Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
- “Its three in the morning,’ she noted with dismay. ‘Do you think Simon’s all right?’ ‘I think he‘s weird, actually,’ said Jace. ‘Though that has little to do with time.” ~ Cassandra Clare
- “It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.” ~ Margaret George
- “A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king’s proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look!” ~ Farid al-Din Attar
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“Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
- “Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify…no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others. This dismays us, and at the same time gives us a sense of relief, because perhaps it is desirable that their words (and also, unfortunately, their deeds) cannot be comprehensible to us. They are non-human words and deeds, really counter-human.” ~ Primo Levi
- “Raphael continued to stare at me, in no hurry to get started. “You know the best way to get rid of a demon, right?” He asked with a serious face. I caught Ivy rolling her eyes as I shook my head. “Exorcise alot!” Ivy caught my expression of dismay. “It’s okay, Beth. He’s famous for his bad jokes. We’re still waiting for him to grow up.” “And like Peter Pan, I hope to avoid that at all costs.” ~ Alexandra Adornetto
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“Shouts of dismay rose as the red flesh splattered against the table. It was only a tomato, but one would think I was pulping a decaying heart by the noise the big, strong FIB officers were making.” ~ Kim Harrison
- “Is there anything else I can do to see to your comfort, Miss Trent?” Perriwick inquired. “She’s fine,” Blake growled. “Clearly, she–” “Perriwick, isn’t the west wing on fire?” Perriwick blinked, sniffed the air, and stared at his employer in dismay. “I do not understand sir.” ~ Julia Quinn
- “Sydney sighed and stood up, smoothing her rumpled clothes with dismay. ʺI need a coffee shop or something.ʺ ʺI think I saw one in a cave down the road,ʺ I said. That almost got a smile from her” ~ Richelle Mead
